After almost two years of horrendous atrocities in Gaza, Senator Bernie Sanders finally recognised the genocide as a genocide. In an op-ed posted on his United States Senate website, he wrote: “The intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”

Like with other recent declarations – from the United Nations and the International Association of Genocide Scholars – this one came too late. But worse than that, it came in a highly problematic framework. Sanders chose to start his op-ed by essentially suggesting that “Hamas started it”. This not only amounts to victim-blaming but also erases eight decades of pillage, plunder, and ethnic cleansing.

This framing is more than just morally bankrupt; it is legally irrelevant and sets a dangerous precedent that any occupied or colonised people who resist must lay down their weapons or face the same fate as Gaza. It whispers to every oppressed population that their survival depends not on international law or humanity, but on their perfect submission to those who seek to erase them.

The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The five prohibited acts stretch across the spectrum of Palestinian experience in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and historic Palestine: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately creating conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, and forcibly transferring a population.

The legal........

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